There were groans and boos from the crowd. Most people started making their way to the edge to have a look at the ball. There was a good chance it might float back again. Sometimes it did.

‘To score, you’ve got to get the ball back from the Jellyfish,’ said James. ‘You know the rules.’

‘Well, I won’t be scoring, then,’ said Old Albert with another shrug. A few people were starting to argue with him now. The arguments are the main point of Jellyfish Rugby, sometimes enabling people to bear a grudge for weeks afterwards.

And then James looked up at me. He raised his eyebrows significantly, and I suddenly realized he had a plan. It was the perfect opportunity for another escape experiment: now was our chance to see whether it was possible to distract the Jellyfish so it would let people through. And the bonus was it would be Old Albert who would be involved in the tricky part of the experiment and not one of us.

‘Lana! Kate!’ I shouted, knowing that nobody would notice amongst the noise. I pointed to a spot on the edge, at some distance from the crowd. ‘Quick. Let’s go. When Albert jumps in, we need to make a distraction over there. Like when Pitiful Pete jumped in. We need to make loads of noise to see if it distracts the Jellyfish again.’

‘What?’ Kate looked round, flustered. ‘What can we do? Quick.’

The noise from the arguments was still loud, but it sounded like they were starting to settle.

‘You should jump in,’ said Lana. ‘And shout. That’d properly distract the Jellyfish.’

‘Oh. Do I have to?’ said Kate. ‘I’d rather not, if that’s OK.’

‘Fine,’ said Lana, squinting and not looking at her. ‘We’ll just sing loudly.’

The crowd was quietening now, and Old Albert was starting to take off his clothes. I could make out the complaining tone of his voice from here, but not the words he was saying.

‘Lean right over the edge,’ I said. ‘Let’s just scream.’

I could see James looking over at us to check we were in position. I gave him the thumbs-up, and he turned to Old Albert.

‘Go!’ I shouted, starting to scream. With Lana and Kate screaming too, we were making a fearsome noise. A few of the rugby players looked round in irritation, putting their hands on their ears, or gesturing to us to be quiet. We were leaning so far over, I couldn’t see what was happening with Old Albert, but I saw what Lana was going to do before it happened. She reached over and, with a sudden lurch, pushed Kate in. She began to scream even louder, as Kate surfaced, spluttering.

‘Kill me later,’ shouted Lana, with a couple of bonus screams. ‘Just don’t stop screaming.’

Kate started screaming again, as she trod water. ‘You’re so mean!’ she shouted. ‘Agggggghhhhhh! I’m really cold!’